


to be touched, to be loved, to feel anything at all

by KittyViolet



Category: Halsey (Musician), Lorde (Musician), Pop Music RPF, Sleepover - Hayley Kiyoko (Music Video), hayley kiyoko - Fandom
Genre: Bisexual Female Character, Bisexuality, F/F, Female Friendship, Friends With Benefits, Hotel Sex, Musicians, New Zealand, Pajamas & Sleepwear, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 07:23:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18633505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyViolet/pseuds/KittyViolet
Summary: Jet lag, new city, halfway around the world, just out of a truly bad relationship, world famous, and about to be more so. It's three am in Auckland, and Halsey just really needs something that feels right.





	to be touched, to be loved, to feel anything at all

Skyscraper height for Auckland definitely would not count as skyscraper height for New York, Ashley thinks. Or Tokyo or even San Francisco. Maybe Seattle? But she’s high enough to see two harbors at once, to see the starlight over the ships, docks, ports, the crazy-making Z-shaped subtropical city on three kinds of water that once seemed like the other end of the Earth. It is, literally, the other end of the Earth. But now she can go there just by saying she wants to include the country in her world tour. (She didn’t tell the promoter the other reasons. There was no reason for him to know.)

She just got here, ate a late dinner, scrambled to her hotel bedroom. Eighteen hours from now she’ll be on stage. Not too long after that, the next single, the one with BTS, drops, and (she’s been told) if she thinks she’s famous now, if she thinks she needs a hoodie and shades to get cigs from the bodega now, well, once the K-pop train hits…

She shouldn’t smoke cigs, of course. Nobody should. It’s not something she wants kids to know. But—that said—more than half her life has been things kids aren’t supposed to know. She got where she is in part by practicing the hell out of her song construction, in part by looking like herself, in part by luck (she rolled a die and it came up Chainsmokers), and in part by saying and singing things kids that think they’re not supposed to know, and then learn anyway, and fear that they’ve learned it alone.

Anyway that’s what the kids tell her, have told her since she was a YouTube phenom with no fixed address, only a comment stream a mile long. Of course she no longer reads the comments, but she does get paper letters. Public Tweets. Emails through her publicist. She does get stopped on the street, despite the hoodies. Kids—teens; she was a teen, supposedly—and people her age, maybe older, stop her and talk to her. I’m working up the courage to leave him, they say. Thank you for making it, they say. Nobody believes me, they say, when I tell them I’m bi. But I’m just so tired of men. I want my first girlfriend. I love my best friends. I’m afraid to tell her that I want to kiss her.

That particular problem is somebody’s specialty, someone she trusts. If it’s three in the morning in Auckland, it’s likely too early for this particular friend to be up. Unless she’s shooting a video today, and the video needs the sunlight.

(Ashes) HK?  
(Hayleykey) Ash!  
(Ashes) HK. It’s the middle of the night here and I am jetlagged as all hell.  
(Hayleykey) Course you are. Did you fly commercial? Also TY for texting me and nobody else in the middle of your night. How did you know I’d be on set?  
(Ashes) Good guesser. Yes, we flew commercial. Jesus, who do you think I am, Tay Swift?  
(Hayleykey) Ouch. I’ve got makeup on my makeup and a cue in like ten. What’s up? Also who are you calling Jesus

Minutes pass before the next reply.  
(Ashes) I would never call you the lesbian Jesus  
(Hayleykey) Everyone else does you just did  
(Ashes) but I kind of need saving from young lesbians the kind who think you're Jesus  
(Hayleykey) How young Ash  
(Ashes) Not like that! OMG HK teens should get with other teens not with us!!! I mean the ones who ask me what they should do with their lives because they trust me because I am angst personified like them and also bi  
(Hayleykey) Ash. Pause. First. Really. How are you. You worried the fuck out of me and my posse when we hung out late last year you.  
(Ashes) Why were you oh god it was around the time of that song wasn’t it  
(Hayleykey) “Him & I” was some gaslit bullshit, Ash. It felt like you had joined a cult. And you weren’t returning texts from anyone.

More minutes pass.  
(Ashes) I owe you an apology.  
(Hayleykey) Uh, maybe?  
(Ashes) That’s why I fucking recorded one. That’s what “Without Me” was. You know who I had to break up with. And I wanted him out out out of my life before he could convince me that he needed me so much I had to come back. I don’t even want to say his name right now.  
(Hayleykey) Point taken. I love "Without Me." It is so sad.  
(Ashes) HK, I’m sad.  
(Hayleykey) You’re jetlagged.  
(Ashes) I’m sad because you get the girls who are proud to be out, and they throw bras at you  
(Hayleykey) They don’t throw bras at you?  
(Ashes) They throw notes. Folded up notes like paper airplanes. And the notes say help me I have a crush on a straight girl. Help me I’m dating a girl who won’t tell anyone I exist. Help me it hurts to be me. Help me I’m cutting again because nobody knows I’m a girl. Help me explain why I’m like you. I’m not a girl or a boy will anyone love me. Help me you’re like me I know you can help. I just want to show them your videos. You’re their ideal, HK. I’m their partner in pain. I can’t always be that. I wish I were--

A long pause.  
(Hayleykey) You can show them my videos, Ash. That’s why I make them! But you can also  
(Ashes) I’m sorry I’m just I can’t sleep  
(Hayleykey) just tell them to look for the right time and then just ask. Tell and ask. It is 2019. They might or might not get the romance of a lifetime but they’re not gonna lose a real friend.  
(Ashes) Those are the two alternatives I guess

(Hayleykey) No there’s also friends with benefits you can get with people and love them and they don’t have to move in with you or become your dependents Ash  
(Ashes) I know but  
(Hayleykey) Sorry I have to go put foundation over my foundation so I look great under more hot lights ugggggh when are you home?  
(Ashes) Do you mean NYC home or near your home?  
(Hayleykey) [sends picture of beach in strong sunlight]  
(Ashes) It’s Lauren isn’t it you want me to get back with Lauren  
(Ashes) You’re cute but no way. She’s hot but she wasn’t for me  
(Hayleykey) You have someone else in mind don’t you Ash  
(Ashes) SHUT UP  
(Ashes) OK go shoot your video I’ll see what I can do about some sleep uggggh

The sooner Ashley gets to sleep in these predawn hours, the better she’ll feel in the Auckland afternoon. At least she’ll be able to sleep all morning. She used to love touring because she never felt at home in any place she called home. Now… now the hotel is the home. At least the duvet’s beautiful, soft and huge. Like the clouds she saw from the plane. Like the way she sinks into the bed, like falling through foam, she closes her eyes, she doesn’t have to support her own weight…

The door to the shared bathroom—shared between two suites—clicks open, and a vision of a girl—no, a woman-- in a fluffy gold robe and improbably long hair walks right to the edge of the bed.

Some things are better than sleep. “You—you knew I was here,” Ashley says.

“You told me you were coming,” Ella replies. “You even told me your hotel. Are you really surprised?”

“Yes. No. Yes.”

“Good.”

“I thought,” Ashley says, “that we were supposed to hang out tomorrow. Maybe do some piano work. Maybe drive to Wellington if you’ve got the day clear. Show there’s on Thursday. Did you really stay up this late just for…” She trails off.

Ella’s hair isn’t as long as it was in her teen years but it’s still magnificent, Ashley thinks. And it’s so clearly something she can control. Especially when Ella plays with it. “I haven’t touched anything except a piano in a while,” Ella says. “Pianos are great.”

“They’re not people,” Ashley replies.

“They’re not girls,” Ella says. Then she’s next to the big fluffy duvet, knees by the bed, standing straight up. “Do you want me here?”

“Fuck yes,” Ashley says. She rolls and lies down on her back under the duvet, under the sheets, and leaves her cell phone on the nightstand, screen down. Stickers with sparkles—two tiny maps of New York and New Jersey, a bi pride flag, the Extinction Rebellion hourglass (sometimes she wonders if she should be touring at all)—shine under the egg-shaped lamp.

“She doesn’t call me on the phone anymore,” Ella says, almost sings. “She’s never listening. She says it’s innocent.” Ella, still wrapped in the oversized hotel bathrobe, slides under the duvet, under the linen, next to Ashley’s bare thighs, though she keeps both her hands to herself, waiting for some permission to touch Ashley’s skin.

“Ella,” Ash says. “You know that song’s not about you.”

“I do know. I talked to Lauren,” Ella says. “I mean, I texted Lauren. Like, a lot. She says it hurt but you’re right and she needs someone else, someone who can be monogamous with her. And you need to have—I mean—“ It’s hard for Ella, privileged remarkable coddled genius Ella who has mostly dated older boys, or older men, to get the words out.

“I need to have adventures,” Ashley says. “Little adventures. Safe adventures. I’ve had enough shitty commitment tragedies. I need safe adventures, with people who won’t take advantage of me, or make me their accessories, or offer me things I should have stopped putting into my fucking body five years ago, or want me to—“

“You need a safe girl to love,” Ella says. “Someone grounded who’s not going to follow you to Korea, or ask you for anything except your words, and maybe your body.”

“A safe girl to love,” Ashley says. “Isn’t that a book? You’ve read so many books--”

“Maybe,” Ella says. “But we’re not just in books. We’re real.” And then Ella’s hands are on Ashley’s hands, under the covers, and then the covers are half off, down to their knees, and the bathrobe is open: Ashley can see Ella’s bust through the thin black pajamas, her nipples that look so ready to be touched, and Ella’s left hand is moving up to cover Ashley’s ribs, her breast, her nipple, under Ashley’s camisole, exerting a warm, soft pressure. It’s enticing, the more so after Ella changes position and runs her fingers, gently, through Ashley’s short, squared-off, red-gold dyed haircut.

“To be touched,” Ella says, “to be loved, to be anything at all.”

“That’s not about you,” Ashley says. “It’s—“

“It is so about me,” Ella says. “Either kiss me back when I kiss you or I’m going right back to that piano in my studio two miles away. And you know I don’t want to do that.”

“I don’t want you to do that. I want you right here.”

Then they kiss, and they kiss some more, and the nexus of their lips becomes the center of their world, like singing but better, or better at three am, so much better for now than anything either of them expected. And then Ashley learns that she’s moved her own hand down, and down, until it’s in between Ella’s almost-closed thighs.

Ella slaps Ashley, lightly, across the back of her thigh. Something throbs and hums in Ashley’s rib cage. 

“Mmmmmm,” Ella says.  
“Mmmmmm?” Ashley says back. “Is this good too?” She’s moving her tongue, her nose, her tongue again, across Ella’s stiff nipple. 

“Good,” Ella says, almost warbles, almost too turned on to use words at all. It’s sexier, somehow, that they’re both in pajamas, still, their button-down tops half-open, their bottoms still on, so that Ashley has to hold Ella’s elastic pajama pants open with her wrist in order to make sure her hand goes where it’s supposed to go, where Ella so clearly wants it to go: Ella is soft and wet and open, and then soft and wet and warm and closed, there’s soft hair, and wet strength, and there’s a clock inside them both that speeds up, and speeds up, and then slows down again, and the whole world opens up, an all-engulfing chord, a cry of joy….

When Ella can focus and make out words again she looks back at Ashley. “Yes,” Ashley says. “An enthusiastic yes. But on me, not in me. All over me, but not in me.”

Ella and Ashley adjust their bodies in ways, Ella thinks, that would be hard to describe, but easy to find again: these are how their elbows, their calves, their clavicles, fit, and that’s how they need to be. They fit together the way one-four-six resolves to five, the way a breaking wave resolves to the Hahei beach tide.

Ashley’s soft maroon pajama pants (they go with her hair) come down to her calves, and then off entirely, and then the pressure between her legs changes and Ashley says "Yes, do that-- go around, press harder, right therrrree," and then both of them lose their words, it’s all mmmm and hmmmm, a cloud of glitter covers the universe, Ashley hasn’t been touched there by someone who knew what they were doing, someone whose only goal is Ashley’s pleasure, for so, so long, it’s Ashley’s body, her own, even while Ella is holding her, and making a circular motion, and then an up-and-down motion, and and and—there are no words, just sounds, the best sounds in the world—

 

“You came here for me,” Ella says, some time later.  
“Are you saying you want to come for me?” Ashley responds. “Come again?”  
“Mmmmm,” Ella says. “I could come again.”  
Ashley reaches behind her, in a black pouch in her bedside drawer, for a tiny red buzzing thing, and slowly, so slowly, places the buzzing thing between her two fingers, walks her fingers from Ella’s shoulders, past Ella’s ribs, around Ella’s waist, to the warm space with curly hair below Ella's waist, and mutes that buzz, and Ella’s mouth opens slightly, and she makes happy sounds that are not singing and are not talking and are, just are, and neither of them know how long it takes.

For Ashley, Ella’s the friend who has the security Ashley will never possess, the friend who doesn’t need anything Ashley can’t give. 

For Ella, Ashley is authenticity, the friend who worked her way up, who’s been through so much, who’s come out the other side. And, also, the friend who’s confident enough in her bisexuality that getting with her doesn’t feel like a secret experiment; it’s just another thing two people famous enough to want to avoid paparazzi might want to do, at three am in Ella’s hometown, where both of them can just sleep in.

And also—they figured this one out back in London, though neither could admit it at the time—there’s just something magnetic when they’re together. Their clavicles fit together. Their knees fit together. They’re supposed to be together, like this, once a year at the least. They’ll never be a public couple, or live together, or do much more than this long-distance friendship with benefits, and that is exactly what both of them want. 

Ella—Lorde’s—going to be with a man again, sooner rather than later, Ashley thinks. And that’s OK. The man better know how lucky he is. And know Ashley won’t go away. And give Lorde—Ella—enough time at her own piano, now that she’s learning to play.

Pale skin and black locks and elfin ears and one bare shoulder—that pajama top stayed off—burrow into the pillow beside Ashley’s; Ella’s not jetlagged, and definitely needs her sleep.

Ashley’s still jetlagged, as happy as her body is. she’s almost ready to relax into sleep beside her friend. But almost ready isn’t ready. She turns from her friend to her nightstand, and picks up her phone. There’s already a text.

(Hayleykey) Ash  
(Ashes) HK  
(Hayleykey) I just took a catnap after the shoot Ash and I closed my eyes and saw you  
(Ashes) And?  
(Hayleykey) You were kissing a girl  
(Ashes) TYSM lesbian jesus you’re very good at predicting but that’s not  
(Ashes) that’s not why I love you  
(Hayleykey) I love you too but not that way :]  
(Ashes) which video  
(Hayleykey) Sleepover  
(Ashes) Better  
(Hayleykey) You deserve happiness Ash  
(Ashes) We all do  
(Hayleykey) I won’t ask who’s asleep next to you  
(Hayleykey) Pretty sure I know  
(Hayleykey) From privilege, super-nice, good with words, writes lots of poetry, probably lives there, has been to the Louvre  
(Ashes) She doesn’t live in the hotel obv but um yeah  
(Hayleykey) here’s what I tell the girls who want advice  
(Hayleykey) Your body belongs to you and you deserve a lover who knows it belongs to you  
(Hayleykey) whether it’s exclusive and serious or one but not the other or neither  
(Hayleykey) Sorry I’m preaching  
(Hayleykey) You weren’t just asking for advice you can give the fans were you you need it yourself  
(Ashes) I’m almost asleep and you’re right  
(Ashes) I had a really good night mmmmm  
(Hayleykey) You get some sleep too K? When that K-pop thing drops you won’t know what hit you  
(Hayleykey) They are a whole new level of attention  
(Ashes) [Korean flag] [six shining stars] [magenta, lavender and blue bi pride flag]  
(Hayleykey) [rainbow Pride flag] [photo of Santa Monica pier]

Just before sunrise Ella wakes up for a moment, looks hard at Ashley’s bare shoulder, at the dusky glitter on Ashley’s closed eyelid, around her eyes, around Ashley’s lips. Ashley is drooling a little, as you’d expect from jetlag. And Ashley’s smiling: secure in her genuine body, appreciated for who she is, able to travel, happy, and very asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for staying with this rarepair! This is a sequel to something I wrote last year: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13121514/chapters/30018246
> 
> The relevant videos this time out are "Strangers" (Halsey and Lauren Jauregui) and "Sleepover" (Hayley Kiyoko). As of southern hemisphere fall 2019, Lorde really is staying in NZ and learning to play the piano for her next album, according to latest reports. As in all popstar RPFs, these are heavily fictionalised versions of real musicians whose real songs are really lovely; I don't know anything more about their private lives than the rest of the world. That said, if there's something inaccurate I can correct, please let me know in comments, and leave a comment if you like!


End file.
